


Atlas

by yourestuckinmyhead



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 02:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3879247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourestuckinmyhead/pseuds/yourestuckinmyhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.</p><p>or</p><p>Bellamy loves Clarke enough to watch her walk away</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atlas

**Author's Note:**

> I just kinda got the idea for this and didn't stop writing once this started.

Sometime between seeing her for the first time and seeing her for the last time he fell in love.

And it wasn’t the mushy love of a first crush, or the overt romanticism of the movies, no it was just him being near her and not wanting to ever take a step away. Never wanting to leave.

It was the thump thump thump of his heart in his chest and how it all belonged to her. It caused him no mortal toil, no gasps of woe, it was just the truth. He was hers even if she wasn’t his. As long as she was happy there was nothing he could argue with. As long as she was happy.

As long as Bellamy got to spend his life loving Clarke, he had no problems at all.

 ****  


* * *

  


It began on a day that Bellamy’s feet felt like they were sinking into the ground.

Whether they were actually sinking or whether he was just imagining it didn’t stop him from feeling like he had turned into Atlas.

(The world had placed itself on his shoulders and although he wouldn’t die from the weight of it, he suffered.)

Atom had lain dying on the ground and he could do nothing nothing nothing so much nothing and Clarke could do something.

Clarke had _done_ something.

Clarke had been a goddess of death while he sat on the sidelines like the lowly mortal he was.

Unlike Bellamy, Clarke could bear the impossible weight.

 ****  


* * *

  


The first time he recognized it was when she was holding a gun and she didn’t seem to want to point it at him.

No, she wanted to _learn_ from him. She respected him enough to trust him, gave little whoops of joy at her success.

Clarke looked powerful with a murderous weapon in her hands. (Bellamy just looked murderous.)

And Bellamy wanted to look that way, too.

 

* * *

 

 

Over and over again Clarke was so strong so impossibly strong, and Bellamy found himself impossibly stronger when he was at her side.

He felt braver, like he could be the hero this time around.

(Maybe this time he would be Hercules and not Caesar.)

But the longer he stuck around the more he realized that no matter how strong Clarke was she could never be as strong as she wanted to be.

She couldn’t be Atlas; not because she didn’t want to bear the weight, not because she felt like the burden belonged to someone else, simply because it was killing her.

Clarke was destroying herself by holding up the world by herself.

So maybe he wouldn’t be _the_ hero, but maybe he could help her carry the weight. (Clarke had always been the hero anyway.)

“We bear it so they don’t have to.”

 ****  


* * *

  


She had to be dying for him to finally say it to himself.

Bellamy had to see Clarke laying there on the dropship floor in order to get up the nerves to think _Bellamy, you are fucking in love with this girl. You can’t let her die._

__

But it was not much different from it was before, Clarke dying from day one on the ground would have been devastating for every single one of the hundred-they all would have been dead in hours and everyone knew it.

But it was not much different from it was before, because it had already been about _him_ and how _he_ will survive and Bellamy hates himself a little bit more for it.

And it was so much different than before because Bellamy knew that she needed to live because Clarke doesn’t deserve to die, that this was now so much more than he would die for her, that this was now about how Clarke should never have to die at all. Even if he had to rip his heart out of his chest and hand it over to her.

And then she wakes back up, because she never needed any of them to begin with.

(But he can’t help the words “Bellamy, I need you” ringing in his ears)

 ****  


* * *

 

Bellamy never feels the need to say I love you until she’s leaving.

Never before had the words been stuck so close to the tip of his tongue, never before had he thought it was something he would ever come close to sharing.

But then she is leaving and kissing his cheek (her lips are so soft what if they were on mine) and walking away, and Bellamy is so so so close to saying those words to her, (if he doesn’t say them now he may never get to say them to her).

But Bellamy knows that this is not something he can say, because if he tells her then she might stay, and as much as he wants that, as much as Bellamy needs her to stay, its not what Clarke needs.

Clarke needs a chance to be Clarke instead of Atlas.

So he watches her go.

“May we meet again.”

“May we meet again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please kudos and comment if you liked it! It means a lot.
> 
>  
> 
> In case you want to check it out:
> 
> isleepthroughlife.tumblr.com


End file.
